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So, congratulations for successfully designing your creative taking into consideration email design best practices! Moving further, how are you going to ensure 100% deliverability in the inbox? Here’s the small sample checklist that can help you:

1. Have used dedicated and dynamic IP

If you are sending large volume of emails, it is better to have a dedicated IP so that you have radical control on the domain reputation and deliverability. Check if you want to have a static or dedicated IP compared to your email volume. Also, use a dynamic IP if reputation is a key. Shared IPs can flag you as a spammer, if a fellow user keeps on sending spam emails.

2. Have valid multipart emails

Ensure that multi-part emails have valid MIME headers including text and html both.

3. Have throttled the number of emails per hour
Certain ISPs bounce emails if they receive a large volume of emails from the same address at a time. Check out the number of emails per hour that you can send as per the ISP restrictions.

4. Have used DKIM sign for outgoing communication

ISPs verify the sender and authenticate the incoming emails. With DKIM, that uses public and private keys it authenticates the sender’s domain and battles phishing. Make sure you incorporate DKIM technology for outgoing emails.

5. Have used a recognizable from name

Use a recognizable from name as otherwise your customers or subscribers will not know you and chances are they flag you as a spammer.

6. Have not used the deceptive subject line

Check if your subject line is appropriate and in tune with the content of the email. If not, you will lose credibility of your emails and as your subject lines are deceptive, you can be marked as spam.

7. Have mentioned physical address and contact in the footer

Many ISPs demand a physical address and number in the footer for whitelisting. Also, comply with opt-out legislation. Provide customers with an easy unsubscribe. If not, you can be rejected during the whitelisting process.

8. Have cleaned and updated the email list

Make sure you clean your email list regularly and maintain the list hygiene. Avoid buying a list and remove unsubscribe immediately from the list. Also, consider permission based emailing.

9. Have monitored the reputation

Check your reputation and campaign performance. Monitor blacklists, SMTP logs and activity trends. Two sites that can help monitor your IP address are MXToolBox and DNSBL. If you are a legitimate email sender and still on the blacklist, request the ISP to take it off with valid reasons. Try and monitor the email open rate, clicks etc. by domain so that you know if there is some issue with yahoo, gmail, hotmail or any other specific email provider.

10. Have followed the rules of email providers

Follow rules for every individual domain. Make sure you abide by their guidelines, rules and regulations as they keep changing the rules and algorithms often.

Wrapping up, these checkpoints would be really helpful in battling spam and domain reputation. We have intentionally not talked about spam triggered words like FREE, %DISCOUNT, SALE etc. as this trend is now changing rapidly. How is your domain reputation and which of the above ways have you used to tackle domain reputation?

Kevin is the Head of Marketing at EmailMonks, one of the fastest growing email design and coding companies. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz, and breathes ‘email marketing’. He is a brand magician who loves to engage, share insights with fellow marketers, and enjoys sharing his thoughts on the latest email marketing best practices at EmailMonks Blog.